Survey says 70 percent in Ukraine consider themselves religious (08/15/04)

Survey says 70 percent in Ukraine consider themselves religious

Religious Information Service of Ukraine

KYIV - The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church's Bureau for External Affairs in Kyiv released information indicating that approximately 70 percent of Ukrainian citizens consider themselves religious. These were the results of a national sociological survey, "Religion and the Church in Modern Ukraine," which was conducted by the Ukrainian Sociology Service at the request of the UGCC in November 2003.

Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, primate of the UGCC, announced the results on June 14.

Among the 70 percent of Ukrainians who consider themselves religious, 40 percent belong to particular religions and denominations, and 29 percent have not decided on their religion. About 16 percent of respondents said they are not religious, and another 14 percent remain undecided.

The survey also revealed that the three biggest denominations in Ukraine are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) with 37.8, 28.7 and 18.6 percent of the faithful, respectively. The faithful of these Churches constitute about 85 percent of the Ukrainians who identified themselves as religious.

The survey also showed that only 73.3 percent of faithful attend church and only approximately 22 percent attend churches and belong to religious communities. The UGCC has the greatest percentage of faithful who attend church at least once a month, which is 23 percent of those who belong to a particular religion or denomination and nearly one-third of those who stated they were religious. Among other churches whose faithful are active are the UOC-MP, the UOC-KP and Protestant churches.

Finally, the survey demonstrated that most Ukrainian citizens do not treat Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestant communities with tolerance. Most Ukrainians consider these groups to be the same and use a generalized pejorative term, "sectarians," to denote these religious communities.

Only 6.5 to 8 percent of Ukrainians evaluate their activities positively, whereas 25 percent have a negative attitude toward Seventh-Day Adventists and 34 percent toward Jehovah's Witnesses. Eight percent of Ukrainians are tolerant of Judaism, whereas 19 percent stated otherwise. Thirteen percent of Ukrainians treat Islam positively, while 15 percent are not tolerant of this religion.

The survey polled 3,000 respondents from all regions of Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, with a margin of error not exceeding 1.8 percent.

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